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A Closer Look At The Dell XPS 13 Ultrabook

Yesterday I received a pre-production Dell XPS 13, one of the new crop of Ultrabooks, and a sweet machine it is. Too bad I’ll have to send it back in a couple of weeks. I could really get used to it.

Among an array of impressive competitive offerings — the Acer S5 comes to mind — the XPS 13 stands out.

The lines have a — dare I say — Apple-like simplicity, and the performance is top notch.

The XPS 13 did not draw as much attention at introduction as it might have. The company kind of whiffed the reveal at the Consumer Electronic Show (CES). The idea seemed to be to hold it until the others had dropped in an attempt to hit some clear air and capture a bit of mindshare, but the effect was the opposite.

Most of the others were introduced Sunday through Tuesday, Jan. 8-10, at press conferences, but Dell waited until Intel CEO Paul Otellini’s keynote speech late Tuesday. During Otellini’s vehement declamation, long-time Dell stalwart Jeff Clarke came out with the XPS 13 in his hand and showed it off to the audience.

The problem is that the huge ballroom at the Venetian was filled with about 5,000 people, and even with multiple cameras projecting the action onto big screens, all that most people could see was Clarke waving a tiny notebook around.

The fact that the outside top cover (or A surface, as we like to say in the industry) is machined aluminum — like the MacBook Air — means that from a distance it looked pretty Apple-ish. So, despite the big venue, with all the people watching, the XPS 13’s unveiling didn’t do it justice.

Let me try to correct some of that here.

Starting with the bottom (or D surface), one can see right away that this is a different type of animal. The dark grey carbon-fiber base is a study in meditation. The polymer is clear, letting the viewer see the weave of the fiber itself in what Dell calls an “authentic material statement.” The only other features are four identical-length parallel lines — two rubber strips that the machine rests on, a row of slits for venting, and a silver edge (the visible part of the hinge) — and a simple silver plaque in the middle.

The plaque has three logos: XPS, Windows 7, and Intel. But as a tribute to the notebook’s design elegance, the logos of the suppliers (Intel and Microsoft) are etched rather than painted. The effect is light grey on silver, which gets the point across (and allows Dell to participate in the marketing programs) without ruining the aesthetics.

On to the screen (or B surface). The gorilla-glass-covered 13.3” frameless display presents a pure obsidian effect when off. When on, the 1366 x 768 high-definition screen is bright and responsive.

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The hardware could be called roughly similar, but the XPS 13 has the latest parts. The Air will likely be refreshed soon. The XPS runs Windows 7, and the MacBook Air runs Mac OS X. They’re priced similarly.

Joseph, the XPS 13 actually is a worthy piece of hardware in its own right. For example, it has the same size screen as a MacBook Air but actually smaller x and y dimensions. It is also thinner on the z dimension at its thickest point by a millimeter or so. And it has features not supported by Apple that IT managers like (e.g., customer factory imaging and hardware security). I believe that in a competitive economy, having more than one option is good for consumers and businesses alike.

Nice article of one of the best machines – but only positive comments! It’s sad that Dell wins on so many design features and then misses a couple of simple ones. A mini-Display Port instead of a mini-HDMI makes no sense today, but ok, that can be handles with a $15 converter cable. More serious (very serious in my mind) is the absence of an SDHC slot. This just kills the machine for consumer use, IMO. Plenty of space, etc. – just missed an important, necessary feature.

This article is a month ago. I couldn’t wait so bought a Toshiba 835 Ultrabook for $799. Love the Ultrabook, Toshiba is a half pound less than the rest of the crew including the Air, but would have liked to have the Dell around. My bet is that since they still have the “Coming soon” on their website for the XPS13 and point to this article they are way, way far away from a release.

By the time they get their i5′s and i7′s out at present day four digit prices, the competition will have their Ultrabooks with serious memory and compute power into the volume range of three digits.

(Typed on Studio XPS 13 notebook which weighs like five pounds so I try to be loyal, but Dell makes it hard. They are blaming their recent financial downturn on everything from global warming to the disk drive drownings — Naw — it’s a development staff that needs both a cattle prod and a serious bonus.)

Hey, Tom. You had to do what you had to do. But I just chatted with Dell, and my contact said they’ve been saying all along the XPS 13 will drop in February, and it’s on track to hit the market next week.